Two cops help a newspaper reporter search for a missing college girl. The trail leads through the underbelly of urban Atlanta to murder and heartbreak. Atlanta Blues was a contender for an Edgar Award, was nominated for the Southern Critics Circle Award, and was named in one newspaper's year-end roundup of books as "one of the three best novels of the year by a Southern writer -- and maybe the best."
The Story Behind This Book
As a reporter/feature writer for The Atlanta Constitution, I covered a lot of stories about street life: prostitution (both heterosexual and homosexual), runaways, drifters, homeless, bar flies, club workers, etc. I knew that what I was witnessing and writing about was great material for a novel. The central problem was how to get all this into one coherent story. Then I recalled that looking for somebody, in this case a missing college girl, could take a searcher just about anywhere. Suddenly I had my story.
Praise and Reviews
Praise for Atlanta Blues
“No one knows Hotlanta’s seamy
underbelly better than ex-Atlanta newspaperman Robert Lamb. Atlanta Blues
is almost Chandleresque in the way it explores the dark soul and swift
undercurrents of this glittering hub of the New South.” ~ Mark A. Bradley,
former Atlanta Constitution intern reporter and former CIA officer now
with the U.S. Justice Dept.
“In Atlanta Blues,
Robert Lamb writes with the authority and sensitivity of (Joseph) Wambaugh at
his best. This haunting novel will keep you awake – reading it the first night,
thinking about it afterward.” ~ Richard Layman, author and publisher
“I was Robert Lamb’s editor
when he covered Atlanta’s soft underbelly of sin for The Atlanta
Constitution in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I know he writes the
truth. The setting could be any big city in America. Bob has done a masterful
job of depicting how policing urban America’s mean streets affects the lives of
the men in blue and the people they care for.” ~ David Osier, former Atlanta
Journal-Constitution and CNN editor
“Crackling with narrative
energy and hardboiled dialogue, Bob Lamb’s new novel is a cat-and-mouse
thriller that blows Elmore Leonard out of the water and gives Joseph Wambaugh a
tight run for the money.” ~ Wade Tabor, author, Miller’s Rules and The
Long-Range Plan
